The air is hot, but the water is not. Paddle it, ski it, plunge a line into or just plain jump in—the cool, cooling water of our lakes and streams and rivers refreshes our bodies and our minds in the always, shall we say, atmospherically challenging Virginia summertime. Here are just of the few lovely places around here where we can cool off and chill out.
Boating Kayaking and canoeing are popular on the Rivanna River and its tributaries. There are boat launches into the river in Riverview Park and Darden Towe Park, and while there is no boat launch per se in Pen Park, the river may also be accessed there as well.
Other popular places to paddle include the South Fork Rivanna and Ragged Mountain reservoirs, and paddle power alone is permitted there.
Boats outfitted with internal combustion engines may be used as long the engines are tilted in a non-operating position and removable gas tanks are removed. The South Fork has a boat launch and parking area on Woodland Road. Ragged Mountain has parking near the dam; boats must be hand-carried to the lake. Boats are prohibited entirely on Sugar Hollow reservoir.
Rivanna River Company co-owner Sonya Silver loves to canoe, but if she goes out on the river by herself she’s likely to do it on a stand-up paddleboard. “Most people think it’s a flat-water type of paddling craft, but we really love to take them on the river as well,” she says. “It’s a lot of fun. You have a long paddle, so it’s kind of like a large surfboard you stand up on and paddle.”
Over in Augusta County, you can canoe right through downtown Waynesboro on the Waynesboro Water Trail, a four-mile stretch of the South River. Boat ramps located at either end, in Ridgeview and Basic parks, make for easy access, but the river is also accessible along the way. Experienced boaters classify the Trail an “easy paddle,” with only Class I and Class II rapids (Class VI is the highest on the scale) along the way. The Trail is open sunrise to sunset.
Waynesboro’s Paddle the Park program offers rentals of solo and tandem kayaks for use in Ridgeview Park on Sunday afternoons until the end of pool season (an August date as yet to be determined). Rentals are first come, first served, and rates are $10 per hour for solo kayaks and $15 per hour for tandem kayaks.
Fishing The 62-acre Chris Greene Lake in Albemarle County has a handicapped-accessible pier and a nice boat ramp, and is stocked with largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie, and channel catfish. Walnut Creek Lake (45 water acres and two beach acres) haslargemouth bass, channel catfish, and redear sunfish.
Among the most popular spots for enjoying the water in Augusta County are Mossy Creek, the South River, and the Sherando Lakes. Some fishermen, or so the popular imagination has it, are prone to exaggerate the size of their biggest catches. Others, and this is a fact, just boast of fly-fishing Mossy Creek, a limestone-spring creek that attracts but often frustrates even experienced anglers.
Mossy is stocked each fall with fingerling brown trout, and hardy, patient souls crouching on its steep banks—wading is not allowed—tell honest tales of catching 25-inchers. In times of high water after heavy rains—in other words, now—Mossy is at its best.
South River Fly Shop in Waynesboro is just a block from the South River, and shop co-owner Kevin Little calls it “arguably the best public trout-fishing” river in the state. Heavily fed with spring water, Little notes, “It’s temperature-moderated summer and winter.”
In the wintertime, the 50-some degree water flowing in keeps the fish at a higher activity level. In the summer, when most freestone steams get so warm that trout die, the spring water coming in “gives us a temperature buffer and a higher diurnal swing (a bigger variance between the daytime high and the nighttime low) so our trout don’t die. We have trout that have been in this water four to five years.”
The Civilian Conservation Corps built Lower Sherando Lake, 25 acres of cool, spring-fed waters, in the mid-1930s. Today it’s used for swimming, and for fishing largemouth bass, bluegill, redear sunfish, and trophy channel catfish.
Nearby hiking trails meander through the woods and along a small creek, a good place to hunt for fishing holes. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service built Upper Sherando Lake (seven acres), now used exclusively for fishing, in 1958. Upper Sherando has two piers, good for fishing for trout and bass. The area’s family campground has 65 sites.
At Orange County’s Lake Anna, the fishing goes on even in the dead of winter, thanks in part to water flowing into the lake from the nearby Dominion Power’s North Anna Power Station, which can be as much as seven degrees warmer than Mother Nature’s average.
Best known for its lunker largemouth bass, Anna has also been stocked with bluegill, redear sunfish, channel catfish, striped bass, walleye, blueback herring and threadfin shad. Anglers can access the boat ramp starting 5:30 a.m. Lights illuminate the ramp when the sun does not.
The 40-acre Lake Nelson in Nelson County has a boat ramp, a courtesy dock, and gorgeous views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and is stocked with largemouth bass, bluegill, redear sunfish, channel catfish, and crappie. Bank anglers can fish from a large mowed area adjoining the parking lot. Electric engines are permitted here, but gas engines are not.
Water-Skiing Water-skiers around here are apt to head to Lake Anna, whose 20 square miles ripple through Louisa, Orange and Spotsylvania counties, making it one of the largest freshwater inland lakes in Virginia. Water ski season at Lake Anna extends from April through October.
Cool air and cool water make full wetsuits or dry-suits necessary early and late in the season. Short wet suits usually suffice by mid- May, and swimsuits will do in June, July and August. For calm water, go out early. For calm spirits, go often.
The Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s use of inspection drones presents opportunities for advancement as well as concerns about privacy. Photo courtesy PrecisionHawk
By Jonathan Haynes
This year’s transmission line inspection from the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative was decidedly more low-key than in previous efforts, when the company used a piloted helicopter to make the rounds. In fact, local residents likely have no idea the weeks-long process was taking place, as CVEC deployed an unmanned aerial system to conduct its annual survey.
Powered by battery, the drone is operated from a remote Virginia location by a Federal Aviation Administration-licensed pilot from PrecisionHawk, its North Carolina-based manufacturer. It then navigates its inspection route with a Lidar scanner, a light-energy laser that scans the surrounding area to configure an active 3-D map of the local topography, complete with the position and movements of nearby objects. Once the drone reaches the designated areas, it snaps photos of the infrastructure with its built-in camera.
CVEC switched technologies to maximize safety, reduce its carbon footprint and examine more area, according to Melissa Gay, communications and member services manager at CVEC. Because drones can fly at a slower pace, hover closer to transmission lines and better maneuver dangerous areas, they can capture higher resolution images of civil infrastructure than can helicopters, whose cumbersome aerodynamics had restricted inspections of high-voltage substations and wooded areas.
But the technology has its shortcomings. The drone costs roughly as much as a helicopter and takes a little longer to complete the same tasks. In fact, CVEC’s inspection ended up continuing several days after its target date.
Gay attributes this to CVEC’s own inexperience. “Navigating our terrain and learning the system took a little while,” she says.
But the stealthy nature of drones has raised issues of privacy concerns. There’s little chance someone on the ground will see a drone, and because it may inadvertently capture people’s faces or license plates in the background while recording their locations, privacy advocates worry the technology might compromise people’s identity or reveal their whereabouts without prior consent.
The way the data is processed does little to soothe these concerns: CVEC does not currently possess the inspection footage, which is being compiled in PrecisionHawk’s North Carolina headquarters. PrecisionHawk will return the footage to CVEC once it mines the relevant information.
Some data repositories have been a hot target for hackers over the past few years, as seen with banks, credit card companies and even dating sites.
Moreover, law enforcement personnel may subpoena data and images collected by private drone companies so long as they obtain a warrant. In the past, law enforcement has subpoenaed footage from drones that have inadvertently captured pot farms or other illicit activity while flying unrelated operations.
To preempt concerns, CVEC notified the 2,175 customers who reside near its route in advance of the inspection. Though it did not reach out to residents who are not patrons and had no way of reaching out to drivers and pedestrians passing through affected areas.
Gay says CVEC received no complaints. But the communities lying along CVEC’s path would have had little say in the matter if they did. Under Virginia’s Dillon Rule, municipalities are prohibited from enacting their own drone ordinances without permission from the General Assembly, and nearby communities were not notified until two weeks before the inspection.
The 1932-built bridge over Little Ivy Creek in the heart of Ivy is deficient, says VDOT, and it carries approximately 11,500 vehicles a day. Photo Skycladap
Bridging the gap
The public got to weigh in on a major bridge replacement project on Route 250 in Ivy, and it picked closing the main thoroughfare west of town for two weeks rather than reducing the flow to a one-lane road with a traffic signal for three months. Those two weeks in July are upon us starting Friday the 13th.
The 1932-built bridge over Little Ivy Creek in the heart of Ivy is deficient, says VDOT, and it carries approximately 11,500 vehicles a day.
Using accelerated construction techniques, four precast box culverts and incentives, Burleigh Construction has a nearly $1.3 million contract, with a $25,000 bonus if the bridge is substantially complete and open July 27, and a $15,000-a-day sweetener for every day it’s open before July 27. If not substantially complete, it will cost Burleigh $15,000 for every day after July 27 the bridge is closed.
VDOT is urging drivers to use I-64 during construction, and warning the interstate will be pretty clogged with the extra traffic during commute times. Cross streets and private entrances on either side of the Route 250 bridge will be open, but traffic will not be able to cross the bridge.
At least school is not in session, which is why July was picked for the work.
Another new chief
Northwestern University Police Chief TommyeS. Sutton will take the reins of the UVA PoliceDepartment from retiring Chief Mike Gibson on August 1. In law enforcement since 1982, Sutton is known for mandating training on mental health first aid and fairness, inclusion and understanding bias at the private university based in Illinois.
Bannon’s bookstore barrage
A Richmond bookstore owner is under scrutiny for calling the police on a woman who accosted former White House strategist Steve Bannon at Black Swan Books. Owner Nick Cooke told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that Bannon “was simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business,” when the woman called him “a piece of trash” on July 7. Said Cooke, “Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody.”
Donovan Webster dies
A journalist whose work appeared in National Geographic, the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine and many others died July 4 at age 59. Webster was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the August 2014 drunk-driving crash that killed 75-year-old Waynesboro man Wayne Thomas White Sr. and was sentenced to 10 years in prison with eight suspended.
Webster. Photo by Ashley Twiggs
Coke choker
Virginia State Police are investigating a drug raid gone wrong in Waynesboro, where members of the Skyline Drug Task Force and SWAT team encountered 52-year-old William Tucker forcing a bag filled with a white, powdery substance into his mouth, and allegedly refusing their aid when it became lodged in his throat. Police believe Tucker choked on a bag of cocaine, but the exact amount he ingested is still being investigated.
Murder conviction
Nineteen-year-old Hasaun Stinnie was foundguilty of second-degree murder and use of a firearm in commission of a felony July 6, for allegedly shooting and killing 45-year-old Brooklyn, New York, man Shawn Evan “Lucky” Davis in September in a parking lot on South First Street. Stinnie accused Davis, who was dating his sister, of beating her. He fired his revolver five times, hitting Davis in the left arm and chest. A jury recommended he serve eight years.
New laws
July 1 always brings the latest legislation passed into law by the General Assembly. Here’s what citizens can now look forward to:
Raccoon hunting after 2am Sunday.
Grand larceny felony threshold upped from $200 to $500. To get this, the House had to pass a couple of Rob Bell’s
victim restitution bills.
Medicaid expansion. Those eligible probably won’t be able to file a claim for six months.
Dogs at wineries. Pooches allowed within designated areas except those involving food prep.
Longer recesses. School boards can lengthen “unstructured recreational time.”
Quote of the week
“We take this journey to gamble on the ancient notion that the truth will set us free.” —Reverend Susan Minasian, who is one of three clergy on the 100-person pilgrimage from Charlottesville to the recently opened lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
“Bleached” (above), is a reaction to Clemons’ experience when visiting a birthing center in Uganda, inspiring a deeper exploration of identity for the artist. The emerging artist will participate in SSG’s “Teeny Tiny Trifecta” show in September, and was recently awarded an Incubator Studio residency at McGuffey Art Center for 2018-2019. Courtesy of the artist
Like most teenagers, Sahara Clemons is figuring out who she is.
She describes herself as “quirky” and “introverted,” a bit shy and quiet. She wears bright lipstick and expresses herself via clothing. She likes to read, travel and look at art. And she’s a Charlottesville High School rising senior who only recently started thinking of herself as an artist.
Clemons can’t remember a time when she wasn’t drawing or sketching, and was often told that she had talent, but she wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. “Talent can motivate you, but it’s hard to distinguish” between enjoyment and talent, especially when you’re young, says Clemons.
She developed a distinct visual voice through both pop art pen-and-ink self-portraits and fashion design—Clemons has participated in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Teen Stylin’ program more than once and won “most creative construction” accolades. She has always created for herself, as a means of self-reflection, but about a year ago, she noticed that people weren’t just looking at her work—they were reacting to it, connecting with it. That’s when she felt like she could call herself an artist.
Clemons’ exploration of her identity as a black woman is a central theme in her collection of paint-and-textile works of abstract portraiture on view in the Backroom at Second Street Gallery—how she sees herself, how she imagines others see her and how she can’t help but incorporate the world’s perception of her into her inner self.
Selections from Sahara Clemons’ collection of new work are on view in Second Street Gallery’s Backroom through July 27.
At the top of a long, vertical piece, Clemons’ face is drawn in pop-art style, with thick, expressive black lines outlining her features, hair, arms and hands, all rendered in yellow against a deep cobalt. The viewer has caught her mid-dance pose, and below Clemons’ face is a pattern comprised of four pairs of feet, all on tiptoe, in yellow and black, dancing across a striped plane. In each black shadow cast by the feet is a dancing figure.
This particular piece represents Clemons’ love of dance, an aspect of herself she generally keeps under wraps. Not that she doesn’t want people to know, but because she likes to surprise people by dancing when the moment is right. By publicly declaring her sub-secret love for dance in a slightly abstract way, she says she is able to “reiterate my means of feeling different, but also feeling somewhat empowered by keeping it in.”
The pattern is reminiscent of Dutch wax fabric (also called ankara), which Clemons first saw during a trip to Uganda where she connected with the bold, unique fabrics in a way she didn’t connect with other things in the country. The fabric has a long history, but in brief, the Dutch adopted a centuries-old Indonesian wax resist-dyeing technique and brought it, along with the bright, batik-style patterns, to Dutch colonies in southern and western Africa in the 19th century. Ever since, the brightly colored bold patterns have been widely associated with West African garb.
One of Clemons’ favorite artists, Yinka Shonibare, uses Dutch wax fabric in his sculptural works to comment on “expansionism and colonialism…and how the world was tapered with that kind of imperialistic mindset,” Clemons explains.
She says the fabrics have allowed her to reflect upon her identity “as a black person, feeling like I was taking something that was part of myself and putting it out there [in a way] I hadn’t done so before.”
Another piece in the collection, “Bleached,” is inspired by the same trip to Uganda, where Clemons and her mother, Eboni Bugg, stayed in a birth center. In the piece, a light brown figure appears to either consume, or be consumed by, white liquid bleach, while a smaller, darker brown figure looks on; they’re cradled by bright green pieces of a Dutch wax fabric pattern.
At the birth center, one woman had much lighter skin than the other women and children there, including her own child, Clemons says. She later learned that this woman bleached her skin “probably for years and months” in order to lighten it.
Clemons felt extraordinary sadness at the idea that this woman was reacting to pressure to look a certain way, and she also “felt some sort of guilt” in her own (naturally) light skin: “I felt like I was perpetuating something for her,” says Clemons, adding that she intends the piece to “show the generational trauma” that can persist among black women when the idea that light skin is more beautiful than dark skin permeates a society. And she wonders how it has affected her perception of, and the perception of her within, black culture.
In creating these pieces, Clemons has come to understand how many things converge to form her identity. “As I became more developed and more aware of things that would be reflective upon me as a black person, my character, my self-expression, it sometimes became easier to walk life more freely, and it became harder, too.” Such is the paradox of self-awareness.
But Clemons continues to search, (she’s still in high school!), and that’s the function of art, after all, she says. It’s “a language to find something in others, find something in yourself, that you didn’t see before.”
The First Purge is the fourth in a series that centers around a sociological experiment in which an annual 12-hour period of the legalization of crime, including murder, is implemented to lower the crime rate for the rest of the year. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Credit to those responsible for the Purge series for recognizing its potential for redemption. What beganas yet another movie with a promising premise but disappointing execution has become the ultimate vessel for social and political commentary in our age of stratification.
The First Purge is, fittingly, the first one in the series to be truly cathartic for those feeling anxiety over the rise of the far right. It may not for everyone—you do have to already be on board with the overall Purge premise, even if you haven’t seen all of the movies. But after almost losing its way a few times, there are some genuinely bold decisions, not to mention the best characters and the sharpest politics of any Purge movie. Whether we knew it or not, we’ve needed a black hero who takes out Klansmen, Nazis and racist militias, and The First Purge is just what the social justice doctor ordered.
The First Purge takes us back to the early days of the New Founding Fathers of America regime, a right-wing populist movement that promises swift answers to the country’s problems. It seizes an idea conceived of by a researcher (Marisa Tomei) to legalize crime for 12 hours as a means of societal and psychological release. The Experiment—as it is then known—begins on Staten Island, chosen for that racial dog whistle code word, its “demographics.”
Some community members are protesting, others are simply observing out of curiosity, while still others are being actively paid to participate. Our main characters are Dmitri (Y’Lan Noel), a drug dealer, Nya (Lex Scott Davis), an activist, and Isaiah (Joivan Wade), Nya’s younger brother. As the night goes on, we switch between their perspectives and that of the architect (Tomei), who is observing remotely with a representative of the NFFA.
Director Gerard McMurray does an excellent job balancing the competing storylines, showing how the rising tension and raised stakes affect people across the island. Everyone is dealing with this anomaly in different ways, but there is a sense that the entire community is in it together. The characters are without a doubt the best of the entire series, particularly that of Dmitri. As a drug kingpin, Nya accuses him of harming his community every non-Purge day. But the film shows him as a product of his environment and an adept strategist, always thinking five steps ahead. His place in the world is the result of cracks in our society’s foundation rather than any love of drugs or violence, and along comes the NFFA to blow up those cracks and everyone in them. When outside forces threaten the community in the form of racist mercenaries, he chooses the community in a heartbeat.
There are two parts that threaten to derail the story before it really gets going: the storyline of the architect and the psychopath Skeletor (Rotimi Paul). The former is an exploration of the dangers of subverting actual science to organizations with vested income in particular outcomes. This is a legitimate topic and the filmmakers treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Think of the scientists involved in the creation of nuclear weapons, or even the anthropologists of Avatar: Just because someone is funding your research, that does not make them a supporter. That said, it is a little difficult to buy the notion that 12 hours of legalized murder in a predominately black borough was the brainchild of a dispassionate, politically neutral academic, so it all rings slightly false when she makes accusations that her research is being misappropriated.
Skeletor, meanwhile, is more of a red herring than a flaw. To McMurray’s credit, he is used effectively in the end, but the worry that his plotline may take over the whole movie could prove distracting for most viewers. Skeletor is an addict and general nuisance to the neighborhood, and the first person we see on screen. He is one of the people paid by the NFFA to participate in the Experiment, and in his introduction expresses a desire to “purge.” A few times, when there are more interesting stories happening elsewhere, the entire movie focuses on him and his over-the-top behavior, but viewers can trust that the good parts of the movie will prevail spectacularly.
The First Purge is the most unapologetic piece of insurrectionary cinema to carry a major studio’s logo since Mad Max: Fury Road. And while it may not be the same sort of artistic revelation, if you’re looking for motivation to fight back, it is well worth your time.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056z
Ant-man and The Wasp, Hotel Transylvania 3,Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Ocean’s 8, Sicario: The Day of the Soldado, Skyscraper, Uncle Drew
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213
Ant-man and The Wasp, Deadpool 2, The First Purge, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Ocean’s 8, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Solo: A Star Wars Story, TAG, Uncle Drew
Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000
Ant-Man and The Wasp, The Gospel According to André, Hearts Beat Loud, Hereditary, Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Ocean’s 8, RBG, Sicario: The Day of the Soldado, TAG, Uncle Drew, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Lorenzo Dickerson’s Maupintown Film Festival opens at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on Friday. Photo by Eze Amos
When Lorenzo Dickerson was in fifth grade at Murray Elementary school, he had to write a book report.
He went down to the school library and came across Extraordinary Black Americans, a book full of dozens of profiles on inventors, politicians, activists, artists, writers and more.
It was a sizable read for the fifth-grader, who read the book, wrote the report and kept checking the book out of the library until Dickerson’s father took note and purchased a copy that his son could call his own.
Extraordinary Black Americans is “what really got me hooked on African American stories, aside from the elders in my family constantly telling me stories,” says Dickerson, now an independent filmmaker who focuses his lens on the African American experience in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and runs the annual Maupintown Film Festival that takes place this week, from July 13 to 15 at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
Dickerson is drawn to film for its ability to hold attention unlike any other storytelling medium. “Being able to hear the stories directly from people who have those experiences, and being able to see their faces as they tell the stories,” is unbeatable, he says.
He learned this in his first documentary film, The Coachman, about one of his ancestors, Warren Dickerson, a descendant of slaves who lived, loved and worked in Albemarle County through the Great Depression, the Great Migration, World War I and World War II. It was a way for Dickerson to capture his research into a single narrative story for his family members.
From that point on, when he saw a movie that moved him and made him think, he wanted to share it with others. “How am I going to get other people to see this?” he thought. He decided to have a film festival.
The first Maupintown Film Festival took place in 2015, at St. John Baptist Church in Cobham, Virginia, on land that Dickerson’s family has lived on for generations—some of them were enslaved on a plantation (now the Castle Hill estate) just across the street.
The theme for the 28 films that will be shown at this year’s festival is “aware of the evidence.” Dickerson says the intention is “to highlight stories that we don’t typically hear. In schools, we’re going to get Harriet Tubman, we’re going to get Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks. And then it kind of drops off from there.” They’re important figures, but it’s the same type of story every time. “And a lot of times, you only get that in February,” during black history month, so “that’s part of the reason why the film festival is in July, so we can get this [history] some other time of the year.”
A variety of perspectives are presented at the Maupintown Film Festival, from an animated cartoon about Harriet Tubman to local director Paul Wagner’s 1982 documentary Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, about a group of Pullman car porters who in the 1920s organized the first African American-led labor organization to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor.
It’s about “bringing awareness to these stories that we don’t often hear and allowing people to understand the experience of [people] of African descent from various parts of the world,” says Dickerson.
There are hyper-local stories in films like Phil Audibert and Ross Hunter’s Someday: The Unexpected Story of School Integration in Orange County, Virginia. Frederick DeShon Murphy’s The American South As We Know It considers African American history in a national sense, examining how African American history began in the South and moved to different parts of the country.
Murphy interviewed community civil rights activists, Negro league baseball players, historians and regular people for his film that he says is ultimately about “the resiliencies of African Americans living in the South, from enslaved people to sharecroppers and people living through and after Jim Crow.”
“A lot of people perished along the way,” says Murphy. They died on slave ships and on plantations, at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, their employers and their neighbors. “It could have been easy to give up during Jim Crow…if you’re here today, you spawn from a resilient bloodline. That’s what I push people to understand with this film,” says Murphy. “African American history is American history.”
Ebony Bailey’s 15-minute documentary, Life Between Borders: Black Migrants in Mexico, offers an international perspective. The film focuses mostly on Haitians currently living in Tijuana, Mexico, who are trying to get to the United States. Many of them left Haiti after a 2010 earthquake devastated the island, and went to Brazil in search of work, but when the economic crisis hit that country, they migrated to Mexico. Now, with U.S. immigration laws tightening and changing, they’re settling in Tijuana, having families and opening businesses.
Showing these rich stories at the Maupintown Film Festival emphasizes that local, personal stories can (and do) carry the same weight as national ones. And Dickerson never forgets the impetus for it all—he still has that copy of Extraordinary Black Americans, and he frequently reads it to his children, ages 3 and 6, so that they, too, might get hooked and have a broader understanding of American history, themselves and the world.
For many of us, the relationship we have with our pet is the best one we’ve ever had. He never gets moody, he listens when you talk and he’s still interested in cuddles despite having seen you naked so many thousands of times. This issue takes into account the good, bad and furry side of pet ownership, because, while he’s usually down to eat anything (another plus!), sometimes that includes poop from the litter box. (Hey, every relationship has its compromises.)
ByCaite Hamilton, Jonathan Haynes, Tami Keaveny, Jessica Luck, Erin O’Hare, Sam Padgett and Nancy Staab
A purrdy good life
Carr’s Hill kitty is a commewnal pet
Frat Cat, as she’s known on Grounds, can usually be spotted at her favorite haunt, Carr’s Hill. Photo by Stacy Smith.
University of Virginia groundskeeper John Sauer remembers the first time he saw the cat. It was a cold and rainy February morning, and the fluffy-tailed feline sauntered up to Carr’s Hill from the fraternity houses below.
This was back in 2005 or so, and it wasn’t unusual to see an animal roaming around—Carr’s Hill was a veritable menagerie during John T. Casteen III’s nearly 20-year tenure as UVA president.
There were the dogs, Whiskey, Brady and Alice (a storied wanderer); a parakeet; chickens; and Sebastian the cat, who decided to forsake the house for the garage, though he stood near the front door of the house to greet guests (and, at least once, shake a dead squirrel at some pearl-clutchers).
But this new cat, Sauer hadn’t seen before that morning. He and other folks at Carr’s Hill started calling her Frat Cat, assuming she belonged to one of the many frat houses nearby. Frat Cat soon moved into the garage with a reluctant Sebastian who eventually grew to tolerate her presence.
Sauer kept space heaters going for both cats in the winter, and a variety of folks made sure the cats were fed; Frat Cat and Sebastian both earned their keep by helping Sauer deal with a variety of pests in the garden.
When the Casteens moved out of Carr’s Hill and Teresa Sullivan moved in in 2010, both Sebastian and Frat Cat stayed on, though Sebastian died of old age a few years later.
“Over the years, especially after Sebastian’s death, Frat Cat would let me pat her and [she] would rub against my leg, but she would never sit in my lap like Sebastian,” says Sauer, who is perhaps Frat Cat’s closest friend on the hill, though the cat who tends to play it cool has had plenty of other pals over the years.
Carr’s Hill was recently fenced off for a multi-year renovation project, and the UVA presidential operation—including Sauer’s gardening duties—moved a few blocks away to Sprigg Lane. At the time, Frat Cat was suffering from ear mites, so Sauer took her to the vet. Upon their return to the Carr’s Hill garage, he posted her certificate of vaccination above the old food table in the corner of the garage, where Sauer keeps Frat Cat’s food and water. “The workmen at Carr’s Hill know who she is and have spotted her going in and out of the garage. I go up to Carr’s Hill…regularly to make sure the food and water are okay,” he says.
Frat Cat often ventures to the School of Architecture, and when it snows, she’ll disappear only to come trotting back in good shape. Sauer can’t help but worry about the inadvertent communal pet, but he knows he doesn’t have to, he says: “Her story is one of survival.”—EO
A lush new home for rescued parrots, thanks to Project Perry
Louisa’s parrot paradise provides a safe haven for exotic birds who have been illegally imported into the U.S. Courtesy of Project Perry.
Green-winged macaws, blue crown conures, scarlet macaws…the very names of parrots conjure images of exotic, covetable, brilliantly plumed birds. Combine this with a parrot’s uncanny intelligence, personality and way with language (at least in some cheeky breeds, like the African grey), and you have some of the reasons why the trade in pet parrots has exploded. But keeping parrots as pets is problematic. They can be extremely needy, aggressive, loud and, with an average lifespan of 40 to 80 years, likely to outlive their well-intentioned owners.
This is where Matt Smith, founder and executive director of Project Perry comes in. His lush nonprofit sanctuary in Louisa offers a safe haven for exotic birds that have been captured in the wild and illegally imported to the United States, raised as breeder birds to support the pet trade or simply in need of rescue or rehabilitation. According to Smith, “Most owners are poorly equipped to offer their birds the two things they need most: flight and flock.”
By contrast, Project Perry offers a veritable birds’ paradise—27 acres for spreading their wings (literally), ample opportunities for socializing among the 200-plus parrots, cockatoos and other smaller birds, and six climate-controlled aviaries equipped with closed and open-air atmospheres, playful perches, native vegetation and even spa-like mistings.
Most recently, the vibrantly hued macaws moved into their new home, quickly adapting to the 39,000-square-foot space that allows for impressive flight paths. Their spacious digs were named after and funded with a $200,000 donation from Bob Barker and his animal welfare foundation, DJ&T, in 2015. When Smith received the call informing him of the generous donation, he confesses to being “a little bit starstruck” to be speaking to the TV legend himself, “with that same gameshow voice we watched on ‘The Price is Right.’”
The inspiration for Project Perry (named after Smith’s deceased pet conure) came to Smith while volunteering at a bird sanctuary in New Hampshire. The need for a parrot sanctuary “opened up a whole new world to me,” says Smith. Soon after, he quit his health care job, relocated to his native Virginia and established his own sanctuary in 2006. “It was a completely grassroots movement,” he recalls. He purchased the initial acres of land in rural Louisa “because birds are noisy,” designed and built the aviaries by hand and recruited local volunteers. Twelve years later, the facility boasts four full-time caretakers and an accreditation from the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries.
Though Smith refuses to play favorites among his flock, he admits to a special fondness for Peach, an elderly African grey who was wild-caught in her youth for breeding purposes and is now “retired.” Arthritic, partially blind and deaf, the old bird still displays her “zest for life” via acrobatic displays and a fondness for her playmate Sparky, says Smith.
“They are really like little people,” he says. “They show love and crave attention. There is something very fascinating and exceptional about a bird that you can do that with.”—NS
Doggone it!
Illustration by Mike Gorman
Safe to say Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a huge fan of dogs: “I participate in all your hostility to dogs and would readily join in any plan of exterminating the whole race,” he once wrote in a letter to a friend. “I consider them the most afflicting of all follies for which men tax themselves.”
That is until, during a trip to France, Marquis de Lafayette introduced him to the Briard, a guard dog known to be both excellent at herding and great companions to their owners. Jefferson paid 36 livres (about $6) for a pregnant one before boarding the ship back to America in 1789. She delivered two pups, which watched over his Merino sheep and served as household companions.
They didn’t accompany the third president to the White House, though. That honor went to Dick, one of Jefferson’s prized mockingbirds, whom he let fly around his office.—CH
Chickens, snakes and bees—oh my!
Classroom pets enhance learning
The Covenant School’s pet corn snake, Buttercup, provides a living learning opportunity. Courtesy of The Covenant School.
Pets are an unquestionably important part of our lives. From companionship, to teaching responsibility, there aren’t many lessons that can’t be learned by caring for a feathered, scaly and even chitinous friend. It’s this instructive aspect of pet ownership that has made critters mainstays of classrooms, allowing young students to dip their toes into the seas of responsibility. While the stereotypical idea of a class pet is something like a hamster named Chuckles, or a passively floating beta fish in a small bowl on the teacher’s desk, there are several local class pets that show the variety of ways they can be beneficial to young minds.
First, there is Buttercup, The Covenant School’s resident corn snake. Aside from being a living biblical allegory, Buttercup helps students “shed” their fear of snakes. Buttercup’s current chief caretaker, teacher Corrine Lennard, believes that “our general fear of snakes is a learned behavior.” She notes that Buttercup reminds her of a puppy, evaporating her students’ potential apprehension. “She loves being held and being close,” Lennard says. Most importantly, though, Lennard sees a great educational opportunity in Buttercup.
“Having a classroom pet is experiential learning at its finest,” she says. “Watching Buttercup shed her skin in front of the students was more valuable than any YouTube video.”
Also at Covenant, teacher Betsy Carter has been raising live chickens. Since the chicks are raised in an incubator in the classroom, the students are accordingly interested. Carter describes their hatching as a “zany” experience, but ultimately one that is fulfilling to her class. “For the most part, they all take pride in their roles as parents” she says.
One of the more unexpected local class pets—bees—is at the Waldorf School, which has recently built an apiary on its campus. According to the Waldorf’s gardening teacher, Dana Pauly, the bees are an indispensable teaching tool. While only certain students will directly handle the bees (barring any allergies), the insects’ presence alone on campus helps facilitate learning. “One of the things that a Waldorf education seeks to engender is a sense of wonder,” says Pauly. “For them to understand where their food is coming from and what’s involved in it is essential.”—SP
Recount your chickens
Rugby Hills were cock-a-doodle-bamboozled when a neighboring hen, Darlene, turned out to be a rooster.
The world can easily be divided into those who are morning people and those who are not—and you know who you are. For her part, Mother Nature has endowed us with morning animals. Enter the rooster, whose full-throttle, break-of-day crowing can needle even the cheeriest of early risers.
In April, when Rugby Hills resident Zak Billmeier was awakened by a bird “making a racket early in the morning,” he posted on NextDoor to ask if anyone else heard a rooster in the area, wondering if there was an ordinance: “I know female chickens are allowed in the city for making eggs, but does anyone know if a rooster is allowed?”
C’ville residents on the neighborhood social network dug in on both sides of the debate with tales of pastoral joy (“How lovely to hear farm sounds in town!”) and woe, with some citing the ordinance Sec. 4-8-Fowl at-large, which states it’s “unlawful for any person to permit any chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons or other fowl belonging to him to go at-large in the city,” and most conceding that the feathered noisemakers are a legal part of the local lifestyle.
A few months earlier, another Rugby Hills dweller, Jenn Silber, had purchased two young hens for the production of fresh eggs and named them Darlene and Ethel. Darlene developed beautiful tail feathers and grew larger than Ethel, then sometime around the six-month mark, Darlene let loose at sunrise and the Silber household realized it had a rooster on its hands.
“The first morning that Darlene started crowing, I immediately posted to NextDoor and our neighborhood Facebook group to apologize for the noise and let everyone know we were working on getting him back to the farm,” says Silber. “I had seen Zak’s post on NextDoor regarding a loud rooster in the Westwood/Rose Hill area a month prior.It seemed like people were very divided about that rooster—some enjoyed the farm sounds and others were extremely bothered by the noise.”
Being that Silber wanted the hens for eggs, and roosters were creating an online dust-up, Darlene was exchanged for a hen about a week after his circadian rhythms had activated.
“I’m not a chicken-hater,” says Billmeier who wants to be sure neighbors know he’s supportive. “I was curious to know if they [roosters] were allowed in the city. I think it’s great that people can have chickens and get eggs.” The moral of this story? Keep counting your chickens after they hatch.—TK
Louie the tabby keeps his owners on their toes
That darn cat! Louie, who also appears on the cover of this issue, loves to join his owners on hikes along Rivanna Trail.
Stopping by the DJ booth at Wild Wing Café, chasing teenagers around the Downtown Mall, exploring the Charlottesville Fire Department—Jenn Spofford says it’s hard to know exactly how many people have crossed paths with her cat, Louie, on his travels. But it’s a lot.
“I think the funniest, strangest thing about Louie is his tendency to follow people,” Spofford says. “Even after three years, we get about a call a week from someone who has walked home and found him on their heels and eventually in their apartment.”
She and her partner, James Rutter, adopted Louie and his sister, Nico, from the SPCA in Lovingston at 8 weeks old, and found out pretty quickly after bringing them home that the kittens had an adventurous streak. But whereas Nico would prowl around and mainly keep to herself, Louie was much more friendly.
“He would explore the neighborhood, but if he saw someone walking by, he would start to follow them,” Spofford says.
Then, while housesitting for her family in the country, the couple went for a walk and noticed Louie trailing behind them.
“He would tag along for long hikes, and so in the last couple years we’ve decided to lean in,” Spofford says. “Our favorite place in town to go is Darden Towe Park, where we’ve hiked some portions of the Rivanna Trail and taken breaks by the river.”
And don’t even get her started on how Louie taught himself to use the restroom.
“One morning I walked in the bathroom and found him peeing in the toilet, with absolutely no training,” she says.—CH
Walking the walk
Give yourself—and your dog—a break
Cynthia Elkey started her first pet-sitting and dog-walking business three decades ago. Rover’s Recess has been offering pooches-and their owners-a break as a midday walking service since 1999. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Cynthia Elkey is so dedicated to her work, she’ll wriggle through a dog door to get to her clients. Elkey, owner of dog-walking business Rover’s Recess, had misplaced the key to the house of one of her clients (who were out of town for the week). Elkey didn’t have the housesitter’s number, so she scaled the backyard privacy fence and stuck her head through the door to gauge how big it was. Immediately, a barking Shar Pei came charging toward her—and began licking all over her face. Elkey was laughing as she tried to catch her breath between licks while squeezing through the dog door.
Elkey had wanted to be a veterinarian as a child, and when she was living in Alexandria, a friend mentioned she was doing some part-time pet sitting. In 1985, primo pet care was not the topic du jour—you either knew some neighborhood kids who helped take care of your pet or Fido went to the kennel. Elkey filled a niche and launched a petting-sitting and dog-walking business for the Northern Virginia area; when she sold it in 1998 she had 40 employees.
A year later, Elkey launched Rover’s Recess, a weekday dog-walking business that serves about 70 clients each month in Charlottesvilkle. New customers meet with Elkey in their home, along with the dog walker who is matched with their pooch. The goal is to make sure each canine feels comfortable with its walker—there’s only been one instance where a dog was too afraid to come out from under the bed, Elkey says.
Each Rover’s Recess walker sees four to eight clients a day, and walks them for between 15 and 45 minutes each (on hot or rainy days, walks are kept short or playtime is spent indoors). Elkey requires any new hires to commit to at least a year with the business (most employees are semi-retired and looking for part-time work) because she wants to make sure her clients feel comfortable and build a trusting relationship with their caretaker.
“You’re the highlight of their day,” Elkey. “Dogs wear their heart on their sleeve—they’re just great.”—JL
Walk this way
Cynthia Elkey gives a few tips for dog walking:
• Using a harness like Easy Walk that attaches on a dog’s chest and makes the walking experience easier.
• Walk against traffic, so you can see what’s coming.
• When the dog is outside, know you’re thelast thing on its mind: “All they want to do is sniff the doggy newspaper, see who’s been walking around here,” Elkey says.
The Wildlife Center’s animal rehab
The Wildlife Center of Virginia urges people to not take care of wild animals on their own, instead recommending they contact the center. Courtesy of The Wildlife Center of Virginia
Oftentimes, when people encounter a wounded animal, they take it home and care for it themselves. The Wildlife Center of Virginia says don’t. It’s illegal and it has unintended consequences on the patient.
In some cases, this well-meaning nursing causes a bird to imprint on humans instead of other birds.
Gus, one of the center’s barred owls, imprinted on a human family that raised her during her early phases of development. She came to perceive her human caregivers as her own kind, which triggered behavioral issues, such as repeated attempts to mate with humans and an inability to mate with other owls.
Gus is housed outdoors in a five-acre tract of land that extends into the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, where the center shelters each animal in a custom-built, wooden enclosure screened with wired mesh. Most animals are treated or rehabilitated so they can be released back into the wild.
But some that cannot be released because of medical or behavioral issues—mostly snakes, raptors or opossums—are retained as “educational ambassadors” who assist the staff in teaching visitors about wildlife.
Gus is a popular ambassador.
Alex Wehrung, an outreach coordinator at the Wildlife Center, recommends that when people come across a sick or wounded animal, they contact his staff or the 200 other rehabilitators permitted by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to handle wild animals.
Tucked in a niche off the side of the road, the center operates in a lodge-like facility that provides office space for employees in one wing and a laboratory for animal care in the other.
It was founded in 1982 by Ed Clark in Weyers Cave, where it serviced wildlife until it relocated to its current location in Waynesboro in 1995. Relying entirely on donations, the nonprofit employs 20 full-time staff members and admits between 2,000 and 3,000 animals each year.
On its website, the center streams live feeds of some of its bear yards and flight tents, and it posts updates on most of the animals’ health—no matter the outcome. “We let people know that not all of our stories have a happy ending,” Wehrung says. “Sometimes we have to euthanize animals.”
Unlike a nature center, the Wildlife Center is not open to the public because of its obligations as a veterinary hospital. But individuals, businesses and schools can schedule a tour through the website.—JH
Top dog
Get to know the Downtown Mall’s gentle giant
Mozart the mastiff, says his owner, is as sweet as he is big. Photo by Eze Amos.
If Mozart likes you, he leans on you. He’ll take a seat at your feet and lean all 198 pounds of his apricot brindle body into you, a gentle invitation for a scritch on the head.
Not that there’s much Mozart doesn’t like, says his human, Susan Krischel, co-owner of the IX property downtown. The nearly 4-year-old English mastiff loves eating ice cream, sucking on stuffed animals, walking through puddles and playing with his best dog friend (who happens to be an 8-pound Pomeranian). Mozart is as sweet as he is big.
He’s lazy, too, requiring a nap after just a single tennis ball chase, or after four rambunctious laps around the coffee table in Krischel’s Downtown Mall apartment.
On their morning walks, Mozart—“Mozey” for short—stops when he’s tired and lies down spread-eagle, drooling and snoozing until he’s ready to proceed. Because of these rests and greetings from Mozart’s adoring fans, Krischel plans extra time into all of their walks. “He’s the ambassador of the mall,” she says of her pet. “A celebrity.”
At a recent party at IX Art Park, Mozart somehow made it into the MoxBox photo booth and sat there for two hours, getting his photo taken (sometimes wearing big plastic sunglasses) with more than 250 different people. He’s very agreeable, unless you’re a skateboarder—then he’ll bark at you.
Krischel especially loves when tiny kids run full-speed up to Mozart and fling their arms around his neck for a hug while the kids’ parents look on, wide-eyed—and possibly terrified—at what might happen. Mozart always just nuzzles them, she says. “He’s a big love muffin.”—EO
Therapy dogs provide helping paws to those in need
Kristen Bowsher and Kuiper, a Leonberger, make regular visits to UVA Hospital as part of a team with Therapy Dogs International. Courtesy of UVA Health System.
When Kiwi’s owner, Julie Walters, puts on her gentle leader and fluorescent green vest, the Labradoodle knows she’s going to work. Specifically, she’s volunteering as a therapy dog through Green Dogs Unleashed, which is a rescue/rehabilitation/therapy training nonprofit based in Troy. Green Dogs mainly rescues special needs dogs that are deaf, blind or amputees, and its therapy dogs run the gamut: Mr. Magoo is blind, and all ages and breeds have come through the program. Currently the organization has 26 teams of dog/human volunteers who visit schools, nursing homes and hospitals to help spread joy.
Walters started fostering dogs four years ago, first through the Fluvanna SPCA after seeing a photo of a dog-in-need on Facebook, then through Green Dogs (she’s fostered more than 65 dogs). After her children aged out of 4-H, she was looking for another way to volunteer and immediately thought of training a dog to help others. She went through the several-weeks-long training process (each segment takes six weeks) with two of her fosters, but both weren’t suited for the work. Then she got Kiwi when she was surrendered to Green Dogs at 4 months old. The puppy had been given up for “bad behavior,” but Walters says it was more likely a case of the original owners not understanding the breed they had gotten.
“They didn’t give her much of a chance,” she says.
Walters had a hunch Kiwi would make a great therapy dog, and says it was clear during training how much the year-old dog loved it: She was calm, paid attention to commands and—perhaps most important—loved the attention. “You can’t pet this dog enough,” Walters says.
Kiwi, 3, is a “foster fail”—as soon as she graduated from therapy training Walters knew she had to keep her; she had fallen in love with her. And Walters isn’t the only one.
The pair visits Central Elementary every Tuesday during the school year to interact with children who have attention deficit disorder. Starting their day petting or reading to Kiwi calms the students down. And Kiwi has become somewhat of a celebrity: During one of their twice-monthly visits to Mountainside Senior Living in Crozet, Walters said a child shouted across the parking lot, “Is that Kiwi?!”
Anne Gardner and her 18-month-old mixed breed, Chewy, just completed the Green Dogs therapy training program (including basic commands, therapy scenarios such as riding an elevator and walking near wheelchairs and learning nonverbal cues), where they met Walters and Kiwi. Although Chewy is still a puppy, Gardner says she’s eager to continue honing his skills so he can pass his test, and start working in schools and the hospital system. And he’s picking things up on his own. The Gardners have new neighbors with young children, and without being told, Chewy sits and waits for the kids to run up to greet him.
“I’m fortunate I have a home that can accommodate an animal; it’s something I know I get my own sense of joy and relaxation and purpose out of,” Gardner says. “There’s more than enough love to go around with these animals.”—JL
Get involved
For more information on fostering or getting your dog certified to be a therapy animal, go to greendogsunleashed.org.
In a glut of similar indie-rock groups, Camp Howard is most memorable for its range. The four-piece from Richmond doesn’t stick to one sound as many comparable bands tend to do, instead it jumps from inoffensive, beachy jams to harder-edged, punk-influenced tracks in the style of Wavves and Cloud Nothings. Stray Fossa, Sweet Tooth and Films on Song round out the local bill.
Thursday, July 12. $10, 7pm. IX Art Park, 522 Second St. SE. 970-3260.
Dining out can benefit more than your stomach: Mention Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA on July 12, and 10 percent of your check at Bonefish Grill will go to animals-in-need.
Nonprofit
CASPCA benefit
Thursday, July 12
Dining out can benefit more than your stomach: Mention Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA on July 12, and 10 percent of your check at Bonefish Grill will go to animals-in-need. Price varies, 11am-10pm. Bonefish Grill, 269 Connor Dr. 975-3474.
Food & Drink
Anniversary party
Saturday, July 14
Albemarle CiderWorks is hosting a party for its ninth anniversary. There will be cider and food à la carte, along with live music and games. Free, 2-6pm. Albemarle CiderWorks, 2545 Rural Ridge Ln., North Garden. 297-2326.
Health & Wellness
Jefferson Sprint Triathlon & Duathlon
Sunday, July 15
Events for both adults and youth: Triathlon includes a pool swim followed by biking and running, while the duathlon consists of running/biking/running. Race benefits Claudius Crozet Park. $40-$170; 6am-2pm. Claudius Crozet Park, 1075 Claudius Crozet Park, Crozet. emily @charlottesvillemultisports.com
Family
Shakespeare in Scottsville
Saturday, July 14, and Sunday, July 15
A cast of 24 youth ages 9 to 16 put on a performance of Shakespeare’sLove’s Labour’s Lost, one of his earliest comedies. $5, 7pm Saturday; 3pm Sunday. St. Anne’s Parish, 900 Glendower Rd., Scottsville. 286-3629.
Eilen Jewell’s music wouldn’t be out of place in a smoky nightclub, but it would sound just as natural in a barn full of slow-dancing Southerners. Her tunes have an interesting dichotomy that’s equal parts Billie Holiday and Loretta Lynn, shifting effortlessly from jazz to folk, often within the same track, and surprising listeners with unpredictable and fascinating trajectories.
Wednesday, July 11. $15, 8pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.
